As we track the slow but steady recovery of our economy and the gradually falling unemployment rate, one thing we may not have noticed is the changing composition of our workforce — it’s getting a lot older. And that’s largely because aging Baby Boomers are staying in the workforce longer and crowding out younger persons. One of the key reasons for this is that our population is getting older. We added 28 million people to our population between 2000 and 2010. The age 55 or older population increased by 17 million over this decade.

Moving forward, it’s even more extreme: The U.S. Census Bureau projects that we’ll add 24 million persons in total to our population between 2010 and 2020 and that the age 55 or older population will grow by 23 million.

These aging Baby Boomers — by 2020 the entire Baby Boom generation will be at least 55 years old — are healthy, expecting to live longer and increasingly concerned about how they will fund their extended retirement years. For these reasons, a growing share is staying in the labor force. In 2000, 13.1 percent of our national labor force was age 55 or older. By 2010, that share rose to 19.5 percent, and it is projected to be over 25 percent by 2020.

This dramatic increase of the 55 plus population in the workforce is much more than just an increase in the number of Baby Boomers in these age ranges. A lot of it has to do with the fact that these Baby Boomers are working longer. In 2000, under a third of the age 55 plus population was in the workforce (either working or actively looking for work). By 2010, this share was more than 40 percent, and by 2020 43 percent of the age 55 or older population is projected to still be in the workforce. A significant portion of this group is expected to remain in the workforce well into their 70s.

One outcome of Baby Boomers staying in the workforce longer is that it has limited opportunities for younger persons looking for employment. There are still fewer jobs in our economy currently than there were before the recession, which has made it difficult for younger persons without much experience to find employment. For the first quarter of this year, for example, the national unemployment rate was 7.7 percent. For the age 55 and older population it was 5.8 percent, while for 20 to 25 year olds, it was 13.5 percent.

What does all this mean for the floor covering industry? Should you be concerned that more of your employees have gray hair than they did 10 or 20 years ago? In all likelihood, your workforce is just lining up with your customer base. Older households continue to be a key consumer segment in many markets in our economy, and floor covering is one of them. We’ve already seen that older households have lower unemployment rates and are working longer. They also generally came though the Great Recession in better financial shape than younger households.

While their home values declined sharply like everyone else’s, older owners generally have owned their homes longer, and therefore benefitted from many years of house price appreciation in addition to a few years of losses, so they typically have more home equity to spend on improving their homes. A recent Joint Center report of the home improvement industry: The U.S. Housing Stock — Ready for Renewal showed that owners age 55 and older accounted for less than a third of national home improvement expenditures in 2001. A decade later, their share of total spending had increased to over 45 percent. So, the Gray Panthers are alive and well and spending on home improvements. Your customer base is aging. It makes sense that your workforce is, too.

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Kermit Baker is the senior research fellow for the Joint Center of Housing Studies at Harvard University. He may be reached via email at kermit_baker@harvard.edu.